


Clockwork Heart

by LittleLinor



Category: Cardfight!! Vanguard
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Xeno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-05-14
Packaged: 2019-05-06 22:31:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14657559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLinor/pseuds/LittleLinor
Summary: Chrono has a second heartbeat.Au where Chrono isn't quite human





	Clockwork Heart

**Author's Note:**

> So back in early Stride Gate days there were theories about Tokimi actually having been from Cray so I thought it'd be fun to explore that because (if it wasn't already obvious) I love xeno friendships and relationships.
> 
> SO. Tl;dr. Tokimi was a unit from Cray who crossed over during some experiment conducted by Gear Chronicle and stayed on Earth, the reason Rive was cooperating with Ryuzu in the first place was that when she shut down he was hoping getting her to Cray would bring her back, and Chrono is a weird human-gearoid chimera who was told from a very young age that he shouldn't let people (especially doctors not whitelisted by his family) take too close a look at his body but never knew WHY until Plot Happened and it turned out the reason he was strange wasn't just some kind of mutation like he'd grown up assuming.  
> I have a sequel planned but we all know how flaky I am with sequels orz
> 
> Set like... 2/3 years post canon and ignores next/z completely.

Chrono has a second heartbeat.  
It's not a beat, technically. The rhythmical sound is closer to clicking, like the sounds one hears when one presses one's ear not to the ticking of a clock with a second hand, but to the more subtle whirrs and clicks of one whose hands move slowly, inexorably. Like a hum that never sleeps.  
When Ibuki first saw him, he had wondered what it would feel like. From the outside, the boy looked normal, if you dismissed the extravagant hair. There was nothing to indicate that Rive Shindou had been right when he told him _this child is special_. The only thing there was to notice, if you observed him more than a few minutes, was his infuriating blankness.  
In retrospect, the blankness makes too much sense. There was only so much you could do, so much you could live, when you had to stay away from others, when you'd been told from a very young age that you shouldn't risk getting hurt, that if anyone looked at you too closely, they might want to lock you up in a lab and take you apart. The best way to not get noticed was to not exist (a feeling he was all too familiar with).  
And yet, even then, Chrono's nature had come out despite everything. Not the composition of his body, but that of his soul: he never sought out trouble but couldn't walk away from it if someone was getting hurt, couldn't get close to people but opted to watch over them and take care of them instead, and it won him a reputation of being scary, intense. It kept people away from him, still, but made it hard for eyes to glide over him and not see him, the way he probably wanted.  
And it was that inability to stand back and let others get hurt, let others be sad, that had pulled Chrono into the storm Ibuki had sown, until he was so deeply entangled in it that all Ibuki's second thoughts could do was knot his stomach with fear as he watched him fight and fight again, on the front lines, risking everything in every battle.  
He fears still, sometimes, now, because even now that the crisis is past, the war has left marks in Chrono, woken parts of him that had been dormant, and if the parts of him that aren't human would have needed a close examination to be noticed a few years ago, now all he needs to do is press his fingertips, his ear to Chrono's chest and feel the two beats complementing each other.  
The beat of time and the beat of life. Which is which, he isn't exactly sure.

Chrono's body is warm.  
Too warm to ignore, if you don't know the truth; it used to be less noticeable, he hears (from Chrono himself, from his aunt, because _he_ has never touched him until he'd already started awakening), just a little under a degree higher, but now the difference is that of a high fever, and grows steeper when some of his powers are active.  
He dresses lightly, just enough to not call too much attention to himself, careful to still cover his arms in winter in case someone gets too curious or touches him accidentally. Cold is a blessing, he says; sometimes it takes him a while to cool back down, and now that they're together Ibuki has taken to silently soaking small towels in cold water to lay them on his back when he seems to be ignoring his own struggle, the way Ibuki himself does too often. He never catches human diseases, at least, so they don't have to worry about fragilising his defenses, but the first time he'd seen Chrono apply ice directly to his skin, part of him had frozen in fear that some deep, mechanical part of him would shift out of alignment from the change in temperature, that he'd have to watch as helplessly as Chrono's own father had, as the person he loved withered away, victim to an illness he could find him no help for. But nothing had happened, and experience proved that it did make him feel better, clearing his mind and slowing down his hypersensitive senses and emotions, and he gradually put his anxiety to rest, opting instead to keep a careful eye on any changes. Just in case.  
But the real blessing he finds in it, that he keeps silent but suspects Chrono knows, is how warm it feels to be in his arms, like being wrapped in a thick blanket, protected from the winter cold. It feels safe, so much that it's actually scary, a feeling of safety so physical that it overrides so much of his normal nervosity, lulling him into comfort or sleep. Being wrapped in that warmth makes him drop his defenses in a way that be both loves and hates, and the contact of his heated skin wakes shivering parts of him that tingle every time Chrono touches his arms, his neck.  
Someday, he thinks, Chrono will stop pretending not to notice, and the greatest surprise is that he doesn't actually mind. Somehow, if Chrono decides to make him confront it, he doesn't think he'll even _want_ to resist.  
Maybe Chrono isn't the only one who has changed.

Chrono's eyes are never completely dark.  
In the daylight, it's hard to see: the ambient light makes the faint glow disappear, and the only hint one might have to the unusual way they work is how small his pupils can sometimes get, leaving a vibrant sea of green that his lashes barely shadow. But in the darkness, it's easier to notice, to be drawn to the light they give, to stare at the glowing colour they etch on his eyelashes, his skin. And when they're larger, it's much easier to see that the changes in his pupils are much faster, precise, _mechanical_ than they should be. That they widen and tighten at will, allowing him to see in ways Ibuki can only imagine.   
At night, sometimes, Ibuki catches himself staring, watching them shine; it's reassuring in a strange way, as comforting as having them aimed at him is breathtaking. It's something powerful, bright, steady, as sure as a star in the night sky. But in the end it _is_ when they're boring into him that his heart beats the fastest, when their intensity turns the soft glow to almost blinding sharpness, the burning green dancing around a circle of black.  
His eyes are like _weapons_ and it's everything Chrono is, again, the potential for so much destruction wielded for so much care. A kind touch from hands that could have been lethal.  
It reminds him, again, that no one's birth or destiny is set in stone.  
Maybe even tools can learn to live.

Chrono's grip is as hard as steel.  
It's not just his hands; every part of his body holds strength beyond what a normal human should have, especially one of Chrono's age, and his short height only makes the contrast more striking, the realisation more shocking. It's as if his muscles held the power of hydraulic machinery, and Ibuki doesn't _know_ how they actually work, what makes their movement hold its own against forces that would have bent or broken any human, he doesn't _want_ to know because he wants to be someone Chrono knows will never try to take him apart for knowledge, someone Chrono knows accepts him like he is, whatever, however he is, but a deep, guilty part of him wants to know, not how he functions but how far he can go. How much his strength could actually grow.  
He had been strong, when Ibuki just met him, but back then it was still dismissable. Chrono worked out a lot, after all, not on purpose but in every aspect of his everyday life, and his fitness was unsurprising. If he was perhaps stronger than one would have expected for his age, anyone who knew what his father looked like would have easily thought it his genes at play. But as his power grew, as he came into his own, his body developed in more ways than one, and the awakening of his dormant organs led to changes so fast that for several months, he was slowing his own movements on purpose, out of fear of breaking anything—or anyone—he touched.   
He's adjusted, now, to what his body can do with a casual movement, and there's something both warm and exciting to watching him move and handle fragile things in a relaxed way and effortlessly pick up something heavy in the same movement, as if it were completely natural.  
Or maybe it's because it _is_ natural to him that Ibuki can only feel awe at it.  
Chrono is never rough when he holds him or takes his hand; back when his powers had just started to grow, there were a few times where he unknowingly bruised, an angry shoulder grab, a hasty catch of his wrist, but now he does everything with a guarded edge of delicacy, handling people, and Ibuki in particular, with even more care than he does breakable items. It's such a contrast with the slight gruffness he still presents to the world in his way of talking and moving, with the destructive power Ibuki knows he can harness; he remembers the times Chrono actually went all out, remembers what his anger and focus look like, and seeing it held carefully contained like this wakes conflicting feelings in him, warmth and fondness at the care and shudders that have nothing to do with fear at the potential, the knowledge of how much range Chrono has in how much strength he applies, how much further he could go.  
Whenever Chrono delicately takes his hand or wrist, part of him shivers in excitement at what he could do.  
Whenever Chrono delicately takes his hand or wrist, he feels a little safer still because he hasn't.

Chrono's smiles are still as blinding at the sun, but these days they're like a sunset, more than Ibuki likes.  
He isn't blind. Chrono smiles _more_ now, when he used to keep a stern face even as he kindly took care of lost kids or children at orphanages or the branch, but that smile is bittersweet, something both warm and pained like the dimming, melancholic evening light. It's for children that he reserves the most of his gentleness and warmth (aside from Ibuki himself), but it's also with them that the mourning softness creeps into his voice and expressions the most.  
Children mean so much to Chrono. Ibuki isn't sure whether it's because he wants to spare them his own pain, or whether it was always just in his nature, but there's a part of him that blossoms around them, like taking care of them was his design all along. He leads and explains and reassures and gives both stern (but never harsh) corrections and genuine, enthusiastic encouragement. But whenever anyone has tried suggesting that maybe his full time job should be something to do with them, Chrono's shut them down quietly but resolutely. And to Ibuki's relief and pain, they've stopped asking.  
He knows. More than actually being normal, there's something Chrono still yearns for, and it's being able to both be himself and cultivate bonds. To live—if not a _normal_ life, at least a casual one. To not have to hide. To not be a _monster_. To take care of children and not know that their parents would pull them back in horror if they caught on to what he really is.  
To be one, himself, someday. To raise someone and care for them and bring them to adulthood happy and ready to face whatever comes at them, where he had to learn to be ready much too early, almost on his own.  
There is no real way Ibuki could protect him from the outside, should his secret spread. No real way he could stop others from looking at him like something inhuman, save trying to talk to them, one at a time, and he knows he isn't the right person to persuade others, although at least his honesty does reach people sometimes. There's no real way, either, that he could just give him the family he yearns for, the way some could maybe have (but would Chrono even want to bring into the world someone who will be forced to face the same struggles he did? Ibuki really isn't sure, and Chrono hasn't, yet, opened up about it. Some things just stay deep and silent, and it hurts).  
But there is one thing he can give him, and that he does give, with all his heart, with every scrap of passion in him.  
He can give him a home. Be there, consistently, casually, until Chrono can take it for granted, accepting and celebrating the things that make him _Chrono_.   
There's still something incomprehensible about being wanted at all, about being important enough to make a difference, but if his will and desire to be at his side can help Chrono feel grounded, can help him feel _wanted_ , then he will spell _I want you in my life_ with every single one of his actions. Because there is nothing about who Chrono is, he thinks, that he should ever be ashamed of, and he is determined to make that known.  
So he doesn't hide the way his breath catches when Chrono holds him, doesn't shy away from his eyes; he curls up in his warmth and prays, with everything he has, that the feelings in his heart will come across, that they will speak for him, that they will spell  
that he loves all those things about him, not because they make him different, but because they make him himself.


End file.
